The oldest shoes were found in America. They are about seven or eight thousand years old. But when did humans start wearing shoes?
One theory sez about forty thousand years ago.
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shoes:https://www.livescience.com/4964-shoes-worn-40-000-years.html
“…For most of their history, humans had big, thick toe bones. Trinkaus said this was because they were doing more walking, climbing and carrying than we do today. In fact, he said, all their leg bones were bigger as well, for the same reasons. This is true for both Neanderthals and the earliest modern humans.
But, around 40,000 years ago, that began to change. Trinkaus noticed that skeletons from this time period still had strong, thick leg bones, but their toes had suddenly gotten smaller. “They had wimpy toes,” he said. “I tried to figure out what would take away stresses on the toes, but not the legs, and the answer was shoes.”